The short version
I started StreamForge because I kept seeing the same problem: businesses stuck with systems they've outgrown, developers who disappear after the invoice clears, and nobody willing to do the unglamorous work of actually fixing things.
I've spent 20 years helping companies untangle the messes that hold them back. The system that takes 30 clicks to do what should take two. The process only one person understands. The tools that worked fine a decade ago but now slow everyone down. I stick around until it's solved.
The longer version
My first job was as a golf caddy at 13. I'd show up at 5:30am with no guarantee I'd get a golf bag. Some Saturdays I'd sit there until noon and go home with nothing. But when I did get out, it was four hours of carrying someone else's weight, making small talk with people who had built things I couldn't imagine yet, and learning that showing up early and staying pleasant were more than half the job.
I carried that into everything after. Waiting tables at country clubs through high school and college, where the real skill isn't the food, it's the tightrope between a kitchen that doesn't care about your problems and customers who expect perfection. I sold cars for a summer on purpose, specifically to learn sales. I learned plenty. I also learned that some jobs ask you to help people make decisions they shouldn't, and I wasn't willing to do that.
I studied computer science and mathematics at Augustana College. One of the moments that sticks with me: sitting in a study room struggling through multivariable calculus with a group of classmates. The concept suddenly clicked for me, and I stood up and explained it in simpler terms. When it clicked for them too, I realized that translating complicated ideas into ones people can actually use was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Into the industry
After graduating in 2006, I landed a job as a "Webmaster" at Centegra Health System. I had no idea what a webmaster did. Turns out, everything: managing the website, coordinating vendors, shooting photos and videos, and being the general-purpose technical person in a marketing department. I rebuilt the entire hospital website myself on WordPress in 2009, before it was a real CMS. I stayed five years and learned that who you work for matters as much as what you do.
In 2010 I started my own shop, A7 Web Design. I wanted to build things, not manage content. Within a year I was making a living. Within three, I had more work than I could handle alone. I started speaking at WordCamps across the country, organized the Chicago events in 2013 and 2014, and ran a PHP developers meetup. I loved the teaching and the community. When I tried to hire and it didn't work out, I decided to go somewhere I could keep growing.
I joined 10up, one of the top WordPress agencies. It was sink or swim, and I nearly sank multiple times. But it taught me things I couldn't have learned anywhere else: how to reset client expectations honestly, how to own mistakes openly, and how to deliver under pressure. I researched and built the initial version of what became ElasticPress, a search plugin that now has over 8,000 active installations. I gave the company-wide pitch on why Elasticsearch mattered. They now run a profitable service business on top of it.
Zeek Interactive
In 2016 I joined Zeek Interactive, a web agency founded in 1995. I came in as a senior developer and spent the next nine years growing with the company. Senior developer, then Director of Engineering, VP of Engineering, Principal Engineer, and finally CTO.
Some of the work I'm most proud of from those years:
- Clinica for Edwards Lifesciences. A clinical patient tracking system I designed and built from scratch, through multiple iterations. It's screened hundreds of thousands of subjects across dozens of studies over seven years. The team uses it daily, and they're now expanding it company-wide.
- A purchase order system tracking orders between Costco and vendors. Over 121,000 purchase orders, 251,000 line items, and more than $6 billion in tracked orders over five years. Still in daily use.
- Rudis Team Store. I oversaw the architecture of a team-based ordering platform for high school wrestling teams. It went on to power over 75% of Rudis's total revenue.
- A deployment system I built in 2017 that's still in use today. Atomic deploys with visual regression testing. Took deployments from hours of downtime and dread to something instant and reversible.
I personally mentored 20 engineers during my time there. Not just in code, but in how to have hard conversations, how to manage up, and how to be honest with clients when the honest thing is the hard thing. I helped take the company from roughly $700K to $3M+ in annual revenue. Those capabilities and systems eventually allowed the founder to sell the business after 29 years at a healthy profit.
Now
I run StreamForge. I work directly with businesses that have real technical problems and need someone who will actually solve them. No account managers. No handoffs. No disappearing after the contract is signed.
I still believe the thing I figured out in that calculus study room: if you can take something complicated and make it clear, you can help people do things they didn't think were possible.
